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Funded Years: 2021/22 2022/23

Research Brief

Partnerships

This project seeks to positively influence children's, teachers' and their communities awareness and understanding of kauri dieback and myrtle rust through the creation of arts projects focussing on forest health.  The project will partner with schools and their communities to build awareness and understanding of forest health and a sense of empowerment to generate positive action to address the ecological challenges posed by kauri dieback and myrtle rust.

Empowerment

Issues of forest health are highly relevant to students and their communities where kauri dieback is destroying kauri, and myrtle rust is devastating taonga species such as ramarama, pohutukawa and manuka. Often children and young people feel disempowered, disenfranchised and overwhelmed by public information about ecological crises.  Students will be encouraged to consider how to design projects for both immediate and long-term impact, enabling them to contribute to public debates about forest management, to foster public understanding and buy-in to changing environmental management of the ngahere.  In so doing, this will empower them to act collectively as kaitiaki and science communicators about forest health in their local rohe.  

Mentoring

Student projects will be guided by a specialist team from the arts, education, social sciences, mātauranga Māori, and forest ecology with postgraduate project mentors in each school, working alongside professional artists who, where possible, will have whakapapa connections to the school’s rohe.

Project Video

A project video, Toitū te Ngahere, was produced for the Biological Heritage National Science Challenge Kaurilands Summit / Crazy & Ambitious 3 conference held during 2022.

Click on the image to watch the project video

Research Methodology

Internationally and in Aotearoa, research literature shows the arts provide multiple, multi-faceted possibilities for drawing attention to, and promoting care for, the natural environment. The arts are particularly effective at bringing different knowledge and value systems into dialogue.

The project will draw on qualitative, creative and kaupapa Māori-informed methods of research, teaching and learning and western science to both reflect local understandings of the ngahere and develop capabilities in the students, teachers and communities around forest ecology, plant pathogens, disease management and forest health. School students will apply the knowledge to the art works they create and then present to local audiences.

These approaches will help to build the children’s sense of empowerment by enabling them to contribute to enhancing their communities’ awareness, understanding and practices in relation to forest health and enhancing the mana of the ngahere.

Project Outcomes

Impacts

Over the life of Toitū Te Ngahere, the following highlights are what happened, what was learnt, how the knowledge has been translated into practice and what impact it had. Toitū Te Ngahere has:

• empowered children to contribute meaningfully to environmental issues through their engagement in place-based, bottom-up collaborative processes.

• fostered children’s worth as knowledge creators in a child-driven and child-centric learning environment which values their knowledge, ideas and opinions and enables them to be creative and innovative environmental communicators.

• confronted the ‘marginalisation’ of children from environmental decision-making by empowering them to have both voice and a sense of agency in local and regional biosecurity initiatives and to build relationships with agencies around kauri dieback, that led to positive community and ecological outcomes.

• partnered with Ngāti Rehua and Ngāti Wai ki Aotea iwi to support a close relationship with the schools throughout the project’s year 2 work.

• grown children’s knowledge of mātauranga Māori and forest ecology.

• enabled children to meaningfully contribute to society’s resources about kauri ora, myrtle ora and ngahere ora through their role as science and environmental communicators.

• provided a platform, through artwork, for the children’s self-expression, representations and reflections of their environmental learning about forest health, which they have and continue to share with their wider community becoming active environmental advocates and voices for the forest – in this way the project facilitated their voice and agency.

• enabled children to develop and re-establish their own personal and communal relationships with the ngahere as in the container art project the children had felt disconnected from their local kauri forest following its closure for kauri dieback but their new relationship does not now require them to be physically in the forest to have a special and connected relationship with the forest.

Te Uru Gallery Exhibition

The Te Uru Gallery in Titirangi hosted an exhibition of artwork, photography, soundscapes and video featuring work created by Years 5-6 students from Konini Primary School in Glen Eden and Kauri Park School in Beachhaven as part of a collaborative research project with researchers from the University of Auckland | Waipapa Taumata Rau.

You can visit, and explore the exhibition using 360 panoramas, by clicking on the Te Uru Gallery Exhibition button below.

Ngahere Ora Children’s Book

Throughout 2023, Mulberrry Grove School on Aotea Great Barrier worked with the Toitū Te Ngahere project to explore their forest on the island.  The children maintained diaries to record their learning journey and they collated what they found in sketches of flowers and seeds, leaf rubbings, paintings, watercolours, photography and poetry.  This artwork is now being compiled into a booklet about ngahere ora so the children can share their journey to learn about forest health and wellbeing.

Toitū Te Ngahere, with funding from the Biological Heritage National Science Challenge, is assisting the children of Mulberry Grove School to produce the booklet for distribution to other primary schools.  The booklet is in its final stages of production and when published it will be distributed to all primary schools in New Zealand.  Along with the booklet, teacher’s lesson plans, created by Toitū Te Ngahere,  that support teachers to engage children in activities to learn about native forest will also be included.

Click the left button below to see a preview of the booklet design and the children’s artwork featured in the booklet.  The associated teacher’s lesson plans can be downloaded using the right button below, and also from the Ngahere Ora Booklet page.

Tomorrow’s World Podcast

A podcast from a 95bFM radio interview with students from Kauri Park and Konini Schools titled “Looking after our ngahere takes kids, art, science, and you”

Tomorrow's World welcomes their youngest guests yet, students from the Toitū te ngahere: art in schools project. A collaborative research project with researchers from the University of Auckland and years 5 and 6 students from Konini Primary School in Glen Eden, and Kauri Park School in Beachhaven. These students really are tomorrow's world.

Konini School Matariki Exhibition

The students from Rooms 14, 15 and 20 exhibited their artwork to parents and their school community at a celebration for Matariki 2022.

View the artwork in the slideshow below.

Use the arrows on the left and right of the images to navigate in the slideshow.

Project Resources

Project Summary